WORKING-CLASS HIGH SCHOOL LEARNERS’ CHALLENGE TO CHANGE: INSIGHTS FROM THE EQUAL EDUCATION MOVEMENT IN SOuTH AFRICA1

Hargreaves (2002) suggested that vigorous social movements have the potential to improve the quality of (and increase the equity in) public education. This paper explores the role of Equal Education, an education social movement in South Africa led by university students and secondary school learners, in the process 1. Interview evidence presented in this paper was also used in Brahm Fleisch and Steven Robins, Mediating active citizenship and social mobility in working-class schools: The case of Equal Education in Khayelitsha, Cape Town. In Citizenship as mediation: The role of intermediaries in relations between states and poor & marginalised groups in the Global South, edited by Laurence Piper and Bettina Von Lieres, (Palgrave 2014). university of south africa Published by the University of Johannesburg and Unisa Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) Education as Change Volume 20 | Number 2 | 2016 | pp. 145–162 www.educationaschange.co.za